I actually made this Sandpiper swimsuit last year but have (obviously) only just got around to photographing it for the blog. I bought 2 lots of fabric at the same time, so expect at least one more Sandpiper in the near future.
This is the Helen’s Closet Sandpiper Swimsuit – it’s no secret I’m a bit of a Helen’s Closet fangirl! I thought about using the Axis Tank and the pants pattern I used to make all my underwear (can’t remember which one it was now!) but since there are some specific techniques with sewing a swimming costume – like the elastic and lining – and because Helen’s instructions are always so great and comprehensive, I thought it was worth plumping for a proper pattern.
I made the size 6 and had to make loads of changes! I realised when I cut out the second version recently, that I cut out the wrong size. I looked at the high bust measurement and thought it was the full bust measurement. I took it in about 4cm off the shoulders, 2.5cm at the armpit, out to 6cm from the side seams at the waist, 3cm off the crotch seam and 2cm off the pants side seams! I did think this was a lot of adjustments – which obviously it is when you’re an idiot and cut out the wrong size! Luckily this was kind of a wearable toile!
I bought this fabric (and the other one) from an online shop I’d not used before – Fabriques. The fabric is fine but doesn’t have super good stretch – I’ve since bought some other swim fabrics from Sew Me Sunshine and Hey Sew Georgie and they feel much nice and have more stretch. It does the job but it’s pretty difficult to get off once it’s wet!
Attaching the swim elastic was a bit of a learning curve! It isn’t very even if you look closely. but when it’s on the body you can’t really tell. It looks quite scrunched up when it’s not on the body – which I assume is normal?
I’m very inspired to sew my second (and third and fourth ehem) versions after the Sewing Bee this week. I love seeing everyone’s different interpretations of the briefs on the made to measure challenges. But I would probably have lost because I don’t generally like lots of flouncey or intricate details in most garments – but especially in a swimming costume! Have you been inspired to sew a swimming costume after watching the bee? (I’m not sure I could sew one to a strict time crunch, though!)
Now that the weather is finally getting warmer, I thought what a good time to share my new Winter coat I made back in February!
I knew I wanted to make a new coat this year as my beloved Honetone coat was really starting to wear out. It was made from pretty cheap fabric from one of the Sew Brum meet ups and there were a couple of things that I didn’t love about it in the end (apart from literal holes in the fabric), like a lack of a full collar – it had lapels but no collar. And the lapels never sat quite right but I’ve learnt more about how to make this happen that I knew then so I was hopeful I could do a good job this time, and get a nice finish!
Also using 100% wool fabric helps with pressing – synthetics do not press as nicely in my experience. The fabric – the wool and the lining – were from Fabric Godmother. I have never been disappointed with the quality of their fabric and since this was a sizeable investment in time, as well as money, I didn’t want to cut any corners.
I used the Bella Loves Patterns Traveller Coat pattern as it had the masculine details and vibe I was looking for in my new coat. It was soooo many pages so I went the extra mile and got it printed at Netprinter (which I think I saw was now closing?!). There are 2 heights for the pattern and since I’m 5’3″ I made the one drafted for exactly my height! I made the size 8 with no fitting changes – since it has a dropped shoulder, I thought that would remove the main place it might look wrong if it didn’t fit properly. Obviously this was a risk since the fabric was expensive and I didn’t want to mess it up.
The pattern calls for a lot of interfacing and I just went for the iron-on style for ease of use and ease of getting hold of it. To help the lapels lay back nicely, I ironed on the interfacing with the lapels in the position they sit in when worn – it was a bit of a head-scratcher to figure out which way that was! I saw this in a Bernadette Banner video from an expert tailor – they talked about holding the fabric in the way you want it to lay when you do pad stitching to attach the interfacing.
Sewing the whole coat from start to finish did take a good while – which was what I wanted to do. This isn’t a quick sew! I started it in January (when I finally got the guts to cut into the fabric) and finished it in February, during a week I had off from work to use up my annual leave. It was nice to spend a good chunk of time working through all the steps.
The pattern calls for quite a bit of top-stitching which helped the fabric to sit flat, since it was quite bulky and spongy in places without it.
I decided to go for a bright yellow contrast lining – because why not! I actually quite enjoy the flash of yellow in the vent as I walk. Speaking of the vent, that was the part of the pattern that was the trickiest for me to understand – I think I was overthinking it. When I actually started to do the steps, it finally started to make sense!
I’m not going to lie, I’m really proud of my coat. I’m glad I invested in good quality fabric and took the time to do everything carefully and I hope it will last me a good few years. I have a bit of each of the fabrics left so hopefully I can do some repairs in the future if I need to. I also feel really cool wearing it. Although I love the warm weather we’re finally getting, I’m also a bit sad that I won’t be able to wear it for a while until it gets cold.
Here are a couple of close-ups of the details on the shoulders and the belt. I really love the epaulettes(?) on the shoulders – I like the little loops they sit through, the buttons, everything!
What’s the most involved garment you’ve ever made? Sometimes it’s nice to take extra time to make something really well finished I think. Obviously quick makes are fun, but slow ones are fun in a different way.
Inspired by The Refashioners returning this year, I decided to actually work on an idea that had been in my mind for a while – to replace some items in my wardrobe I never wore with some I actually might.
2 Summers ago, when I was living with my sister she have me some leftover linen she had from making some dresses. My favourite go-to casual trouser pattern is the Ardens by Helen’s Closet but there wasn’t quite enough of any of the fabrics to make a whole pair, so I made colour-blocked pairs, using 2 of the colours on each pair of trousers. I liked the idea but they were hard to pair with things and I honestly felt a bit silly wearing them. I still had some of the fabrics left so I decided to use the Arden Shorts hack on the Helen’s Closet blog and make them into shorts in a single colour.
Here are the 3 pairs of original trousers:
As you’ll see below, there wasn’t enough of the cream linen left to make another leg so there are 5 pairs, not six.
I went for a 3.5in inseam which is what Helen suggests – and I checked it against my Dawn shorts and they are 3.5in too. They feel a little long standing but reeeaaaly short sitting down so I didn’t want to go shorter. I found I had to stitch the front pockets into the hems or they hung out the bottom of the shorts – which is a look, but not the look I was going for (I feel like it’s more for super short denim shorts?)
I had to cut out the pieces that were missing in each colour – either another full leg, with one of each pocket, or for the double blue pairs, 2 fronts (with 3 pockets) or 2 backs (with pockets). Because the hem is wider that the original trouser leg in the hack, I also traced off a hem piece for the existing pieces, which I sewed on the bottom of the relevant leg piece, having cut them shorter (but with added seam allowance). I also had to cut some of the front pocket pieces in 2 halves because I didn’t have pieces of fabric big enough left to cut them out in one go – and it was more important to cut the leg pieces in one go.
Anyway, without further ago, here are my 5 new pairs of shorts – just need Summer to finally arrive in the UK so I can finally wear them!
The above pair of trousers became the below 2 pairs of shorts. This is actually the pair of trousers I wore the most – but that’s not saying much. It was probably 3-4 times max!
I actually had quite a lot of the denim blue linen in my stash as it’s the same fabric I used for the Ilford Jacket I made for my brother in law. I was hoping I would have enough to make a matching shirt to have a Summer co-ord set but alas there really aren’t any pieces big enough to cut out a shirt. Sigh.
I think I maybe wore this pair of trousers once. I still like the colour combination but they just didn’t work with anything in my wardrobe.
I particularly like the mint colour. I’m realising, however, as a result of Me Made May that grey is not a colour I generally love in my wardrobe. Though maybe on the bottom half it’s okay – just not near my face as I feel like it washes me out.
I don’t think I wore this pair at all after taking these original photos! As I mentioned above there wasn’t enough of the cream linen left to make another leg. I have kept the scraps – maybe I’ll think of something to do with them one day?
This is a slightly lighter dusky pink linen than the fabric I used for my wedding suit but I still like it. I love bright obnoxious pink, but also this more muted shade.
It was a massive pain unpicking all the stitching and overlocking but I hope I will get more wear out of these shorts than the trousers – I maybe don’t need over 5 pairs of shorts in my wardrobe, given I live in the UK but I’m hoping at some point in the future to go travelling to warmer climes so then they will come into their own.
Do you every re-asses makes and decide to harvest the fabric rather than giving away the garments? I do both definitely – but I was glad I’d kept the remaining scraps in my stash or all of the fabric would have been wasted!
Last Summer I went on holiday with my university friends (to attend the wedding I made this outfit for) and I realised I didn’t own any shorts! This seemed like a terrible oversight – and was very gladly remedied since the week we were away – in the UK – was boiling hot!
I bought this relatively light-weight denim at the same time as I bought the blush pink cotton/linen I made the suit from. It made them nice to wear when it was so hot as the denim isn’t too thick!
I made my standard size 4, which is the size I’ve made all my dawns in (and I’ve made 2 more pairs I haven’t shared yet!). I did my usual adjustment of taking and extra 2cm off the back seam, tapering to the standard seam allowance at about 10cm down. I maybe need a little more room in the bum, though, as these are a little hungry! I have one other pair that does this and they are also from a light weight denim so maybe the pattern needs a certain weight of denim to hold it’s structure?
What’s slightly funny to me is that they look kind of long in these photos (though they don’t feel long on!) and they are sooo short when I’m sitting down! Something to bear in mind if you spend a lot of time seated – you might want to add a bit more length!
I did do gold jeans top-stitching on these as I wanted the jeans feel for them. I also did the zip fly variation – you can follow Megan Nielsen’s Ash Jeans sewalong for the instructions for this. The Dawns are drafted with a button fly and while I like that on my first ever pair of dawns, I don’t love it on the only other pair I did a button fly on – I’m just more of a zip fly person I suppose!
I may make another pair of dawn shorts in the future – maybe out of a cotton drill or something a bit more summery than denim – though of course, as I mentioned, this is a light weight denim. I do also have some pairs of linen Arden shorts planned so I’ll see how many pairs of shorts I really need in my wardrobe before I commit to make more dawn shorts! I slightly don’t feel like I need any other trouser patterns in my stash than Dawn and Arden! They’re so much my go to’s!
I think I need to plan another summer holiday so I’ll get some more wear out of these! Any warm/hot places you love going? I’m open to suggestions!
So a while ago I saw a photo of a Thai actor in the below outfit and immediately thought about recreating it. Last year I had 2 weddings to attend and for one I was going to wear my Mersis Dress which I made the previous Summer. But for the other one, I figured why not make a new outfit!?
You can see that the above outfit is more of a jumpsuit than separates – the front is one piece, but with suit vibes at the top. I decided I wanted to make separates – much more practical for ahem going to the bathroom (you don’t end up basically naked!).
I wanted the trousers to be what I consider stereotypical suit trousers, so with some pleats, welt pockets on the back and with front pockets. I came across Butterick B6878 and while the illustrations and photos on the pattern don’t make it look amazing, I did some googling and decided to go for it.
There are 2 darts on the back and 2 pleats on the front. I made the size 10 and actually can’t remember if I made any changes and didn’t write any notes – normally I write fitting notes as I go so if I make the pattern again, I’ll know what I did last time. There are shorts, tapered leg trousers and wide legged trousers. I went for the wide legged version.
I ended up making 4 welt pockets in total as the jacket also had 2 – though double welts rather than single welts. For those keeping count, I had a total of 6 pockets in my outfit! Winning!
Obviously sometimes you need sustenance while you’re sewing. IMHO you can’t beat a good cup of tea!
The jacket pattern I used was the Ready to Sew Joe Blazer. I used this pattern before for my pink smoking type jacket and since I’d already hacked it to kind of be double breasted, I thought it would be a good place to start. Oh, a word on the fabric. It was this lovely blush pink linen/cotton blend I bought from a fabric shop in Abingdon called Mason’s. They have 3 craft shops in total and are kind of legendary locally. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I was pleasantly surprised by their range of fabric and they have every notion you could think of.
Before when I hacked the pattern I pivoted the fronts to make them wider but this made them on an angle, so this time I toiled it a couple of times to figure out how best to do it and went with slashing and spreading (again can’t remember by how much sadly). You can see above I pinned a little wedge out of the front to make it even more straight, then sewed the facing to the front along that line from the inside.
Of course there was also a lot of hacking to the back. I merged the back side and centre back pieces into one and then cut a semi-circle out of the back, leaving a bit extra for seam allowance. It was definitely a head-scratcher to figure out the construction to make it all look neat, but I figured it out in the end.
↑ business in the front
↓ party in the back!
The loop at the top which holds the ‘strings’ was 20cm x 11cm and sewn in half with a 1.5cm seam allowance. The loops were 74cm, 128cm and 146cm long, though I did have to slightly adjust some of them so they weren’t too slack or too tight.
I did really love wearing this outfit to my friends’ wedding back in August but there was quite the heat wave that week so maybe it wasn’t the most sensible choice! I was more than a little warm. I did take a t-shirt to change into in case I couldn’t cope with wearing the jacket and once I started dancing to the live band, I did admit defeat sadly.
Not to blow my own trumpet but I am really quite pleased with how the back in particular turned out, but also managing to make it actually look like a double breasted suit on the front – though the bottom set of buttons looks a little low proportionally, looking at these photos. Eh, the sewist’s curse, to always look for flaws that literally no-one else would ever notice!
While I may not get the chance to wear the whole outfit very often, I am definitely planning to wear the trousers with some other tops. And actually as part of Wear It On Wednesday I have already worn them once – I think when the weather gets a bit warmer they’ll get more into regular rotation!
To preserve my modesty I did add a popper to the front to make sure the lapels didn’t gape and show everything! As I’m sure you can appreciate I couldn’t wear anything underneath the jacket!
I did ask one of my friends to take a few photos of my outfit on the day. You can almost feel how hot it was in the photos – so sunny! I love hot weather but this outfit was not the best choice and I didn’t take any alternatives. Clever me!
I really enjoyed trying to recreate an outfit from photos I found online. I’ve done it a couple of times before (both outfits I wore to the dressmaker’s ball were red carpet copies [1 and 2]) but I definitely want to do some more of it. I just need some occasions to wear some more formal outfits…
sewingmachinations.com 